


Jackie And That Stupid Bug

by Magnetic_Stars



Category: That '70s Show
Genre: F/M, Hyde is confused, Internal Monologue, Kitty is a saint, One Shot, just a silly short story, slight AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:55:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27685237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magnetic_Stars/pseuds/Magnetic_Stars
Summary: Hyde was simply in the right place at the right time to catch something he never thought he'd see in a million years.
Relationships: Jackie Burkhart & Steven Hyde, Jackie Burkhart/Steven Hyde
Comments: 10
Kudos: 49





	Jackie And That Stupid Bug

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for fun months ago and thought I'd share it. Enjoy!

**Forman Residence,** **Sunday Afternoon.**

The Formans usually order take-out on Sundays so that Kitty could have a day free from cooking. Hyde knows this means the kitchen would be vacant before lunchtime, making it incredibly easy for him to slip in and nick a cold can of beer from the fridge. Red wouldn’t notice if one went missing. Even if he did, he’d blame Forman right off the bat. 

Having perfected the art of stealth, Hyde doesn’t make a peep as he quietly wisps into the kitchen. Normally, he wouldn’t linger around after successfully acquiring his small token of joy. Now, however, he finds himself frozen right where he stands by the fridge.

Through the sliding glass door, he catches sight of Jackie rounding the corner of the curb, wearing a frilly skirt with a pink ribbon tied around her waist. It whisks behind her leisurely in the gentle breeze as she moves. She pairs the pink tone of her ribbon with a ridiculous pink bonnet... in the middle of September. 

Hyde rolls his eyes and nearly turns on his heel, until something entirely unexpected happens.

Jackie pauses in the middle of the driveway. Something peculiar catches her attention by the toes of her feet, her soft features twist slightly as she casts her eyes to the ground. Without a moment’s hesitation, she bends down and gingerly picks something up in her small hand. 

Hyde dips his chin down in astonishment, making his sunglasses slide to rest at the tip of his nose. What the hell is Point Place’s Perfect Princess doing crouching on the Forman’s driveway like that in broad daylight?

When she straightens up, the can of beer nearly slips from Hyde’s hand and alerts Red of his sneaky endeavor. 

Hyde can barely believe it. 

He must be dreaming.

There’s no way this isn’t a dream.

 _The_ Jackie Burckhart holds in her hand a _bug_. 

Jackie Burckhart bent down to pick up a _bug_ from an unbrushed driveway. 

Weirded out and confused, Hyde narrows his eyes to identify the creepy crawly perched atop Jackie’s finger. It looks to be a golden dragonfly. It’s huge and nasty-looking and Jackie is just _holding_ it. Does she even know what it is? The girl can hardly enter the basement without scrunching her nose up at its constant messiness, and here she is picking up a bug like it’s normal to her.

She studies it for a few seconds as though she were diagnosing it. Then, she carefully massages one of its crooked wings with a care and tenderness Hyde has never even seen her use with Kelso. As soon as she releases the wing, the bug takes off and propels itself into the sky above her head. 

She stalls a little to watch it leave. Hyde stalls too, hoping to stare at her until she vanishes into thin air, because Jackie does _not_ do bugs. At least, he’s damn near positive that she doesn’t. This is most definitely a figment of his imagination. 

After adjusting the bag around her shoulder, Jackie fixes the bonnet atop her head so that it tilts just right at a fashionable angle before making her way to the basement’s outdoor stairway. 

Hyde stands there for a moment longer, replaying the scene in his head and wondering why he finds it so hard to accept.

 _‘Cause it’s Jackie,_ his brain calls back. It’s only natural for her to find it gross. She wouldn’t come one foot near Kelso if she so much as suspected him of playing with the neighbor’s dogs earlier in the day.

Hyde opens his beer with a crisp _tshhkkk_ and proceeds to take a small swig. He doesn’t succumb to the satisfying sigh he usually has after the first sip and it’s all because he’s thinking too much. It’s a Sunday. His brain shouldn’t be working this hard.

Someone clears their throat, causing Hyde to bristle and slowly turn around in shame. Kitty stands at the doorway with an arched brow and a smirk that’s so unmistakably amused.

“Can I help you with anything, Steven?” she asks sweetly, letting her eyes drop to the chilled can of beer in his hand. “Or have you helped yourself already?”

Hyde smiles nervously. “Would you believe me if I said I thought it was a can of soda?”

“No, and neither will Red. But…” Kitty swiftly goes over to the cabinet below the sink and reveals an entire 6-pack of beer. “You’re lucky I stumbled upon a convenient store yesterday. Red will never know.”

The nervous smile swells into an exuberant grin. “Thanks, Mrs. Forman.”

“Well, I prefer you stealing and drinking booze under this roof rather than God knows where like a… a… like a complete hooligan,” she finishes with a flourishing wave, setting the replacement beer in the fridge. She then turns around and wags a sturdy finger. “But don’t you be making this a habit. No more without permission or else I’ll stop making waffles in the morning.”

“I hear ya,” Hyde replies, nodding solemnly. “Loud and clear.”

Kitty gives him a look that reads ‘I-don’t-entirely-believe-you’ and then breaks into a warm smile. This woman has a heart of pure gold. She’ll put her foot down when she needs to, but she sees past a lot of Hyde’s defenses and doesn’t out him on them. Much like a mother would… or at least should. 

“Now, be a dear and finish that outside before you join your little friends downstairs. They don’t need the encouragement, and I don’t want an army of drunken kids in my house on the day of the Lord.”

“No one could ever deserve you, Mrs. Forman.”

“Oh, Steven,” Kitty chuckles, trying to hide her blushing cheeks with her hand. “You be sure to mention that to Eric for me.” She turns to leave when Hyde quickly addresses her again.

“Say, Mrs. F, how do you feel about bugs?”

Her head whips around to face him. The smile on Kitty’s face drops without a trace. Her once rosy cheeks go pale as she stares intensely. “Why? Are there bugs in this kitchen? You’d better tell me if there are, Steven. I have a repellent I’m dying to use.”

“I can see you’re excited, Mrs. Forman, but no. I was just…” Scratching his head, Hyde searches for a logical reason behind his question, but he doesn’t have one. “I was just wondering. Forget I asked.”

Unconvinced, Kitty’s eyes roam around her spotless kitchen with worry. Then, her eyes settle on Hyde again, warm with concern. 

“Anything the matter, Steven? Something on your mind?”

Hyde plasters on a wide grin. “Just the excitement of having a nice, cold can of beer all to myself.”

“Outside,” Kitty reminds him firmly, pointing to the sliding glass doors. 

With a comical salute, Hyde turns to follow the point of her finger. The moment he steps outside, his frown returns. The summer is coming to an end, and the light September breeze is surprisingly refreshing. Casting his eyes to the rose bushes Kitty has been trying to grow, Hyde watches the dizzying butterflies as they flutter around with no sense of direction.

One thought continues to gnaw at him at the back of his head: Jackie and that stupid bug.

He really shouldn’t be thinking this hard about it. It’s just that bugs are gross, at least, Hyde thinks so. Judging by Kitty’s alarming reaction, she rightfully thinks so, too.

Jackie has had numerous occasions to express to him just how gross she finds _him_. Hell, she calls his sideburns his _‘ugly porkchops’_ to his face! So, really, how dare she now hold a bug and continue to think him gross for burping in the middle of a sentence, or for wearing the same shirt three days in a row?

‘Maybe she just likes bugs,’ comes a suggestive, reasonable thought.

Hyde takes a long swig and purses his lips.

No… it’s not natural. Jackie once cried because she got a muddy stain on her squeaky-clean sneakers. How could she touch a dirty bug without knowing where it’s been? Doesn’t she know they carry parasites? That they can lay eggs on you? Infect you? Feed off you?

Hyde shudders.

Bugs are creepy, no matter how pretty their colors shine. Creepy, gross, and… they wear their skeletons on the outside… and… Jackie just picked one up. Fixed its wing and set it free. She didn’t do it for the attention, or the praise, or the compliments. She did it like she wasn’t thinking about it. Like it was normal to her. She didn’t hesitate to touch it, she didn’t ignore it. She helped it.

Hyde would’ve ignored it. Hell, he would’ve done something way worse than that. Something he’s certain Jackie wouldn’t approve of, something that could possibly compel her to deliver a hard punch to his shoulder. He’d been punched by her before, and Jackie’s a lot stronger than she looks.

She’s probably a lot less shallow than he thinks, too…

“Steven. What’re you doing out here?”

It’s considerably impossible to mistake the strange soft and raspy tone of Jackie’s voice.

Hyde reacts calmly. He doesn’t turn to her, but he does peer over his shoulder with his typical air of nonchalance. He holds his beer up to her and gives it a light shake in lieu of an answer.

“Ah.” She nods to herself and begins to peruse the driveway with a small crease between her dark brows. “I don’t understand how you’re able to drink that at any hour during the day. Must be a guy thing.”

Hyde watches skeptically as Jackie continues to scan the ground beneath her feet as she paces. 

“What’re you doing?”

“Well if you must know, I think I lost my cute silver anklet out here. It’s a limited edition piece from Dior’s last capsule collection. Without it, my outfit is totally ruined.”

Under any other circumstance, this statement would’ve goaded an eyeroll from him, but now Hyde only hardens his eyes as he studies her.

“Oh, thank God!” she cries, retrieving her lost accessory by the bricks circling the rose bushes. Dusting it off, she throws Hyde a sneer. “Can’t wear this now, there’s soil all over it. Would you believe that?”

“You find soil gross?”

“Duh. It’s dirt. Dirt is dirty.”

A typical response one can expect from Point Place’s Perfect Princess. Although, for the first time in forever, Hyde doesn’t immediately dismiss something Jackie has said. He works his brain around it, trying to understand her logic. 

Hyde puckers his mouth in thought before he takes the last swig of his drink.

“What do you think of those butterflies over there? Find ‘em pretty?” he asks, nudging his chin in their direction.

“Mhm.” Distracted, Jackie furrows her brows as she digs around her purse. Producing a fresh square of tissue paper, she gently folds her bracelet into it and pockets it safely.

“What about dragonflies?”

This grabs her attention. Lifting her head slowly, she regards him warily, reading his face like she knows exactly what he’s thinking. A beat of silence passes them by before Jackie finally gives in to a soft smile. Her eyes smile with her, and Hyde never thought that deep brown eyes could reflect the sun so brilliantly like that.

“Fun fact about dragonflies, Steven,” she says. “They eat a lot, and they hunt in the air while flying. If they can’t fly, they starve. If they starve, they die.”

Whatever he was expecting her to say, it certainly wasn’t that. It unnerves him, throws him slightly off guard. Why does she know so much about bugs? No, not just that. Why does she care? She shouldn’t. Especially not when she’d just picked up her dirty accessory from the ground with just the tips of her painted nails, too disgusted to get it on her skin.

Annoyed, Hyde feigns disinterest. “A pointless fact to carry around if you ask me.” he says. “It’s just a dumb bug.”

“And you’re a dumb boy for thinking it’s just a dumb bug,” she replies, shrugging carelessly before giving him her back and heading towards the staircase.

Scowling, Hyde turns to watch her leave. “I figured you’d find them gross,” he calls after her.

“No more than I find you, that’s for sure,” he hears her distant voice as she begins to descend the stairs.

Speechless, Hyde stands there in the driveway surrounded by the dizzying butterflies as they mock him repeatedly. He’s drowning with questions and, although he’d never admit it out loud, he’s dying for answers. All of a sudden, he feels as though he'd underestimated Point Place's little angel. Standing there, swimming in his crashing thoughts, he realizes that Jackie has only ever been one dimensional to him, two at best whenever she stopped talking about Kelso or shopping. What else does she like? What else does she find gross, or not? Hyde has always been drawn towards controversial topics with hypocritical facts. Jackie and that stupid bug are very much controversial and hypocritical. They’re like oil and water, they simply don't mix, and for some unfathomable reason, Hyde simply cannot let this go. 

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I'm not sure where this idea sprouted from or why I felt the need to write it all down, but I found it somewhat interesting to consider, especially when given how the show never specified how Hyde and Jackie got together. Why I decided that a bug is what draws them closer to one another, no clue, but it was sure fun to write, so voila!


End file.
